Monday, July 14, 2014

Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence: The Idea of the Tragic

This is a complex and subtle book that deals with consistent
intelligence on the importance of tragedy. It also shows what is
simultaneously Eagleton's great virtue and great vice, an obsessive and
all-powering love of paradox. In small doses Eagleton's constant
emphasis on irony is stimulating and properly dialectical. Over three
hundred pages, the length of this book, it can be repetitive and overly
mechanical. There is something a bit predictable in Eagleton's constant
desire to be original and stimulating. And yet it is worth it to work
their way through this book. Eagleton starts off by dealing with two
common ideas of what is tragic. The first is that tragedy is something
that is very sad. This is considered by many academics to be trite, and
they present the second, more pernicious view that tragedy is something
of great import that happens to sufficiently great people and in doing
show vindicates the justice and morality of the natural order. Eagleton
is properly critical of this and much of the book is an acute critique
of those tragic theorists who seek to resolve the cruelty and horror of
life into convenient didactic messages. Noting C.S. Lewis' passing
reference to the fundamentally untragic quality of everyday life and
ordinary people, the "uncouth mixture of agony and littleness" Eagleton
notes that Lewis' own writings on his wife's premature death "do not
seem to view the event as dull and uninteresting, though other people's
real lives are perhaps much more uncouth than one's own." Commenting on
Martha's Nussbaum's argument that Antigone shows the sterility of a
conflict-free life Eagleton notes that is akin to arguing that "the
lesson of the Illiad is that the ancient world needed a United Nations
Organization." A.C. Bradley, George Steiner and Karl Jaspers are also
rebuked for rhapsodizing Tragedy. Throughout the book Eagleton
constantly swerves through a panopoly of Scyllas and Charibdeses. On
the one hand we must beware those who conservatively and callously
invoke reactionary assumptions of a "human nature." On the other hand
we must not accept those shallow post-modernists who assume that all
change is good, and that one should be hostile to whatever is permanent,
unalterable or historical. On the one hand it is callous to assume
that suffering is ennobling and tragedy great for that purpose, since
most people are clearly not redeemed that way. On the other hand one
must not be so sceptical as to reject hope altogether or simply assume
that is naive to possess it. Eagleton notes Franco Moretti's
provocative comment that the modern world prefers unhappiness, because
assuming the worst is likely to occur makes it easier for bourgeois
society to forgive itself for not providing the best or the adequate.
On the one hand the didactic and teleological aspects of Kant appear
crude, while on the other hand the primitivist and simple-minded
valorization of "life" itself in Nietzsche and Lawrence are callous and
cruel in their indifference to others.

After discussing the weakness
of tragic theory, Eagleton goes on to discuss the value of agony. He
then goes on to discuss tragic theory from Hegel to Beckett, and then
discusses the problem of heroes in tragedy. There then follows a long
discussion of freedom, fate and justice which includes, not always
productively, a discussion of the problems of determinism. Yet Eagleton
points out that tragedy, which supposedly vindicates the moral order
undermines it by showing so much gratuitous injustice and cruelty, a
problem much tragic theory cannot really grasp. There is then a chapter
on pity, fear and pleasure, which includes a passage on incest and also
raises the question of whether are pity is a scarcely concealed sadism
at the fate of others. There are then a chapter on tragedy in the novel
and the interesting relationship between tragedy and modernity.
Tragedy can be dismissed as archaic, yet arguably the experience of
modernity is itself tragic. Although critical of Lukacs and of the
pessimism of much Western Marxism, Eagleton praises it for recognizing
the essential truth of modernity, that is both a "revolutionary advance"
and "one light nightmare of butchery and exploitation." There is then a
chapter on the nature of evil and the emptiness of the demonic. In
this chapter and in the concluding one about sacrifice and Thomas Mann
one occasionally feels that Eagleton is pushing the logic of official
rites not only farther than the officials want, but also farther than
anyone would normally like to push it. Eagleton is a former Catholic
and often notes the similarity of Marxism and Christianity in the way
they can combine deep pessimism with a sense of ultimate hope. As a Jew
myself, I don't find this comparison entirely kosher, but this
unpromising theme repeats itself through the book. It is perhaps
appropriate then that Eagleton concludes his work by arguing the Left
must go beyond the rhetoric and pragmatism and culturalism. Instead of a
Catholic or a Protestant, Eagleton quotes Kafka and his final metaphor
is the last thing Joseph K sees before he dies.